Obesity remains a serious health problem and it is no secret that many people want to lose weight. Behavioral economists typically argue that “nudges” help individuals with various decisionmaking flaws to live longer, healthier, and better lives. In an article in the new issue of Regulation, Michael L. Marlow discusses how nudging by government differs from nudging by markets, and explains why market nudging is the more promising avenue for helping citizens to lose weight.

Two long wars, chronic deficits, the financial crisis, the costly drug war, the growth of executive power under Presidents Bush and Obama, and the revelations about NSA abuses, have given rise to a growing libertarian movement in our country – with a greater focus on individual liberty and less government power. David Boaz’s newly released The Libertarian Mind is a comprehensive guide to the history, philosophy, and growth of the libertarian movement, with incisive analyses of today’s most pressing issues and policies.

There’s been a factoid making the rounds during the Wisconsin union standoff that you may have seen. I’m not sure what the ultimate source of the factoid is, but here’s the meat of it as reiterated by a blogger for The Economist:

Only 5 states do not have collective bargaining for educators and have deemed it illegal. Those states and their ranking on ACT/SAT scores are as follows:

If you are wondering, Wisconsin, with its collective bargaining for teachers, is ranked 2nd in the country.

Now, aside from the factoid, if true, providing no real insight into whether collective bargaining is good or bad for education – there are myriad variables at work other than collective bargaining, none of which does this control for – but the factoid itself is highly dubious. Again, it is hard to find the original source for this, but I looked up 2009 ACT and SAT state rankings, and at the very least it seems highly unlikely that Virginia ranks 44th out of all states. According to the ACT ranking, for instance, Virginia places 22nd, and on the SAT (assuming the linked to list is accurate – I’m doing this fast), it ranked 33rd. It’s hard to see how those would be combined for a 44th place overall finish.

How about the Wisconsin second place-finish? Well, that is accurate for the SAT, but notably only 5 percent of Wisconsin students took the SAT – a negligible rate. On the ACT, which is the main test taken in the Badger State, Wisconsin finished 13th – not bad, but hardly great.

So what does this tell you? Not that collective bargaining is educationally good or bad – like I said, you just can’t get there from here – but that you have to be very careful about your sources of information. Unfortunately, that seems especially true when you’re dealing with education.

High rates of unionization in the public sector have led to very high labor costs in the form of generous collective bargaining contracts. Now state and local governments are under increasing financial pressure, as a worsening national economy has led to decreased revenues for states and municipalities—many of which remain locked into the generous contracts negotiated in more flush times. Thus, as businesses retrench, governments find themselves in a financial straitjacket. In addition, as government unions grow stronger relative to private-sector unions, their prevalence erodes the moderating influence of the market on the demands that unions make of employers.

Now, as an economic downturn threatens state and local government revenues, officials who want to keep their fiscal situations under control would do well to look skeptically at public-sector bargaining—especially since the existing political checks on it have proven ineffective. Public officials should eschew public-sector bargaining when possible, or at the very least, seek to limit its scope.

As keepers of the public purse, legislators and local council members have an obligation to protect taxpayers’ interests. By granting monopoly power to labor unions over the supply of government labor, elected officials undermine their duty to taxpayers, because this puts unions in a privileged position to extract political goods in the form of high pay and benefits that are much higher than anything comparable in the private sector.

This paper shows how the unionization of government employees creates a powerful, permanent constituency for bigger government— one that is motivated, well-funded, and organized. It also makes some recommendations as to how to check this constituency’s growing power—an effort that promises to be an uphill struggle.

Indeed it does. The study makes another point that is worth keeping in mind during these battles. Many discussions of government unions, such as this one on Friday’s Newshour, tacitly or explicitly assume that we’re talking about teachers, police officers, and firefighters. But the study notes:

Of course, while these “heroic” public servants are the ones who are most visible in public disputes over collective bargaining, a large number of unionized state and local employees fall into more mundane categories such as secretaries, middle managers, engineers, administrative law judges, school custodians, and cafeteria workers.